Real-time encoding, decoding, and transcoding platforms are frequently exposed to error prone audio inputs. Traditional platforms typically receive multiple audio inputs of varying quality. For example, a traditional platform might receive a high quality audio input stream and a lower quality audio input stream. If a problem is encountered with the high quality audio input stream during real-time encoding or transcoding, then the system typically will switch from the high quality audio input stream to use the lower quality audio input stream for the remainder of the real-time encoding or transcoding.